The author would like to apologize for the fact that this article was not posted a month ago when he wrote it. I don't actually want to care all that much about gay marriage, but the whole idea that it is 2009 and a big percentage of the population zealously wants to class an entire segment of the population as subhuman and undeserving of the same rights as the rest of us creeps me the hell out. I'm getting married in a few months, and it really bugs me that there's a huge movement that wants to cheapen *my* marriage by turning into an instrument with which to spread hate and oppression.

• During some bitching about the President, the conservative "expert" on The Situation Room today said that he was very disappointed in President Obama's "stimulus pakistan". At least, that's what the closed captions said. Methinks the captioner needs a fresh pot of coffee.
• After a week of teabagging, the moral right went on to produce an advertisement through an organization called "NOM" denouncing gay marriage and claiming that they wanted to form a "rainbow coalition" to protect their "freedoms". NOM's other big project is called "2M4M". "Teabagging". "NOM", "Rainbow coalition", "2M4M". Has the right just decided to stop trying and write The Daily Show's material for them?
• One of the fine folks who comments on Slacktivist hit the nail on the head about how gay marriage hurts the "freedoms" of heterosexuals: If you're a homophobe, and homosexuality stops being socially stigmatized, suddenly you are no longer "normal" -- you're the weirdo who's got an irrational beef with gay people. You're the slightly shameful elderly relative no one likes to be seen with in public because she might forget that it's no longer 1950 and she isn't allowed to make a darker-skinned person give up their seat for her. The "threat" to their way of life is that their bigotry will suddenly make them what they most fear to be: atypical.
• And speaking of that NOM commercial, in it a doctor actress playing a doctor claims that if gay people can marry, she'll be forced to choose between her profession and her religion, because the state will force her to (vague). Leaving aside for the moment that I can't even imagine how her religious freedom could conflict with her duties as a doctor in regards to gay marriage (I mean, there is exactly one big obvious thing that a doctor's religious conviction might stand in the way of them doing that comes up on a regular basis, and I suspect that married homosexuals have a remarkably low demand for abortions and contraceptives), I just want to point out: if your religious convictions are so strong as to prevent you from doing your job, perhaps you should have considered a profession which you do not enter by swearing an oath to Apollo!

One of the little corner-of-the-screen tags on CNN yesterday informed me that "The average American spends more on taxes than on food, shelter, and clothing combined!" And I'm outraged by this.

No, I'm not outraged that our taxes are so high, especially because they're not; taxes in the US are lower than pretty much anywhere resemblign civilization, and if you want to know how great it is to live in a tax-free society, ask a Somalian.

I'm outraged at CNN for repeating someone else's lie. This particular lie comes from The Tax Foundation, an organization whose raison d'etre is to announce that everything you earned between January 1, 2009 and April 13, 2009 was stolen by the government, and only now are you earning money for yourself instead of being a slave.

I suggest that we immediatelyt let anyone who wants it be declared exempt from all taxes. And then, at the end of the year, send them a bill for their usage of the roads, all public services, their share of national defense, police service, the fire department, and a hefty bill for the education of their children. After all, they'll all be so much richer from having that extra 28% of their income that they surely won't mind paying a fair market rate for all the tax-supported services they normally enjoy. Of course, that fair market rate would have to be two or three times as much as they'd pay in taxes, since they wouldn't be able to leverage the same sort of government protections that tax-supported services do, but, hey, it's their money.

(I'm declaring 2 PM "Boss Freedom Hour", when I celebrate the fact that up until that point in the afternoon, the money made by my labor goes to my employer, not to me. But I actually totally made up the calculation since I have no idea how much my employer actually makes from my labor)

Anyway, about that outrage. I make a good living. I make a very good living. I'm not rich, even by the standards of pundits who claim that anything under $250k is "poor". And my housing costs are ridiculously low. I bought my house shortly before the whole housing insanity that drove us into this recession. So I'm making a very good living, better than most. And I'm paying less than most for housing. (As a data point, Leah, until she moved in with me, rented. My monthly mortgage payment is less than half her monthly rent). A quick, back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that I spend 15% of my income on housing. If, as the Tax Foundation claims, the average American pays April 13 -- sorry, 28% of his income in taxes, and that's more than he spends on food, clothing, and shelter, then that means I must spend less than 13% of my income on food and clothing...

Now, I was taught in school that you spend 1/3 of your income on food no matter what. I thought this was impossible then, and I think it's impossible now (It turns out that the 1/3 number came about because back in the 50s, the US government hired a Czechoslovakian immigrant to work out the poverty level, and she did, based on the fact that in Czechoslovakia, housing was incredibly cheap, and food was incredibly expensive), but if it were, that would mean that 33% + 15% + x% < 28% where x% is the amount the average American spends on clothing. So, the average American spends -20% of their income on clothing. I go down to the store, and I buy a new shirt, and the store pays me fifty dollars.

But let's just assume for the moment that the Tax Foundation is right, and that the average American loses 28% of their income to Uncle Sam, and they lose a further something-less-than 28% on food, clothing, and shelter. That still leaves 44% of the average American's income unaccounted for. So, 44% of the average American's income, according to the Tax Foundation, is disposable, not used for anything necessary (Yeah, yeah, health care, but real men don't need health care. God gave you two kidneys for a reason). Almost half the money you make, you can use for anything you like.

Which makes July 25 "Necessity Freedom Day", the day after which any money you earn is not used for food, clothing, or shelter, and you can just blow it on, I dunno, booze and hookers if that's where your heart lies.

Call the office, I'm taking off the rest of the year.

This Is What the Class War Looks Like (via)

This is his argument? This is his argument? "I didn't need the money, I didn't want the money. I did it JUST TO HURT THE POOR BECAUSE I CAN MUAH HA HA."

I have a vague theoretical notion that there was a time when you could be a conservative on the basis of sound economic and social principals, and not because you were a cartoon supervillain.

Purely theorhetical.

That guy who threw a shoe at former president Bush has been sentenced to three years in jail.

How is it that we've managed to turn the cradle of civilization into America's running gag?

There is the best line from the article:

Zaidi became a folk hero of sorts in the Arab world after hurling both shoes at Bush, with considerable speed and accuracy, during a news conference Dec. 14. Bush, a nimble athlete with great reflexes, successfully ducked

There's also this:

Zaidi's siblings were angrier, as the crowd and police pushed and shoved each other. "Maliki is ready to give his wife to Bush just to keep him happy," one sister said.

When you install a toilet, you actually place it directly on top of the finished floor, not against the subfloor.

The reason I point this out is because when I moved into my house, I had to cut about an inch off of the bathroom door. This is because years upon years of flooring had been installed without mining though previous generations. The floor in my bathroom is sheet vinyl. Under that sheet vinyl is vinyl tile. Under that, I believe, is a strata of linoleum, and beneath that, I dunno, maybe dinosaur fossils or spam or something. At the lowest layer is pine, which was the original floor of the entire house. As far as I can tell, the pine is still in fine shape, but many of the other layers have started to deteriorate. The result of this is that over the past few years, my toilet has started to cant to the right. A full repair of this is going to require reflooring the entire bathroom, a task I plan to undertake as soon as Leah and I can sort out exactly how we want it to look.

Unfortunately, though, earlier in the week, the tilt reached a point where it damaged the seal where water goes into the tank. Since this was kind of an urgent repair, I decided to go ahead and do it straight away rather than waiting for the weekend. So, I removed the supply pipe to the toilet, replaced the cracked plastic nut, and reattached everything, checked for leaks, and, right around eleven PM, Eastern Standard Time, Tuesday, November 4, 2008, I pulled myself out of the toilet.

And so did America.

Not bad for a night's work.

Addendum: Proposition 8 is up in California. In a hundred years, teachers are going to be explaining how the same day we elected our first African-American president, we also voted to officially declare a whole class of citizens to be inferior and took away the right to marry which they had enjoyed for several months. Teachers will stress the irony of this. The students will probably think that Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama were childhood friends,

None of our enemies are afraid of Obama; why would they be? On the other hand, all of our enemies are afraid of John McCain

The problem is, most of our allies are afraid of him too. And a pretty fair percentage of us are afraid of a Palin vice-presidency.

In other news, the McCain camp has recently discovered that Osama Bin Laden is a big fan of breathing an oxygen-nitrogen mixture. They have moved immediately to remove the substance, commonly known by its street-name, "Air", from their campaign headquarters. The inexplicable choking deaths of several staffers has delayed the release of their new series of attack ads, titled "Obama: He performs many of the same biological functions as OSAMA BIN LADEN. And HITLER."

In a shocking twist, however, certain republicans are now backing a dark horse independent candidate, Leo the MGM Lion, after discovering that while America's enemies are afraid of John McCain, they are freaking terrified of lions.

Joe the Plumber Speaks (via Politco

McCain was solid in his performance," he says. "I still don't know where he stands," he says of Obama. "I'm middle class. I can't have my taxes raised any more."

He also says he actually isn't in the bracket where Obama would raise his taxes -- but he's worried that Obama will shift the bracket down.

He also said that, in his encounter with Obama, the Illinois Senator "a tap dance...almost as good as Sammy Davis, Jr."

So... Obama won't raise your taxes, but you don't trust him because maybe he's lying. But McCain on the other hand you just trust implicitly. McCain, many of whose statments have been proven to be lies, many of whose statements Karl Rove has said do not pass the test of truth -- Karl Rove -- you're going to believe without question. McCain's tax plan cuts your taxes less than Obama's, but you're thinking "But maybe Obama's Tax Plan is a lie and he's really going to raise my taxes." But never would you broke the idea that John McCain might be lying. McCain, who sat there and told bald-faced lies which have been thoroughly debunked you believe, while Obama is "tap dancing." How could you now know where he stands? He just told you where he stands.

You know the truth. You have been told the truth. You are choosing to ignore the truth.

Repeat the chorus, folks, "That's not stupidity. That's insanity"

It's funny how no one ever says "Y'know, McCain's plans all sound good... But what if he's lying and really hates America? I mean, there's no evidence, but how can we know for sure that he didn't go all Stockholm Syndrome while he was a POW and now hates America and if elected will raise taxes for everyone and, I dunno, eat babies?"

Bill Ayers is a Distinguished Professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also founded an organization which did some violent terrorist-y things many years ago. He was never convicted of being a terrorist, but neither has he ever recanted his radical views.

He's been fundamental in the reform of Chicago's school system, and was Chicago's 1997 Citizen of the Year.

He was heavily involved with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Project and the Woods Fund of Chicago.

Senator Barack Obama (D-Illinois) was on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Project and was involved with the Woods Fund of Chicago.

To Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, this is hugely important. After all, if Obama really loved America, he wouldn't associate with a Citizen of the Year former convicted terrorist.

According to John McCain, when presented with an opportunity to be part of a project which distributed a $50 million grant to public schools in Chicago, or with a project that in 2006 distributed $3.1 million to local organizations in order to help with poverty relief, Senator Obama should have said "Sorry, charity is not as important as snubbing a man who did something really bad a very long time ago and has done lots of good things ever since."

Things Senator McCain seems to dislike:

• Charity


• Unconvicted former domestic terrorists


• Sex education

Things Senator McCain seems to like:

• Pedophiles


• Houses


• Cars

Incidentally...

Among Senator McCain's 13 cars is a 2007 Ford half-ton pickup truck. About Henry Ford, someone once said "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration." That someone was Adolph Hitler. Now, why would a true patriot like John McCain drive a car made by a company founded by a raging antisemite and Nazi-sympathizer?

New York Times Collumnist David Brooks has said, "Obama‘s problem is he doesn‘t seem like a guy who can go into an Applebee‘s salad bar and people think he fits in naturally there." That is, it's just not fair to us working-class stiffs that Obama is getting away with seeming like a Normal Folksy Person, when he really wouldn't be caught dead in a Family Style Restaurant.

Mr. Brooks: When trying to score cheap political points by insinuating that a candidate is too much of an elitist to go to a Good Old Fashioned Normal Working Class Person's Favorite Family Restaurant, you may want to try harder not to reveal that you yourself are too much of an elitist to even know which Good Old Fashioned Normal Working Class Person's Favorite Family Restaurant has a salad bar.

In other news, Obama has been accused of "plagiarism" because a speech he gave about the price of oil had a similar message to a speech given by Mario Cuomo back in the 1980s. I suspect the person responsible for making this claim is my sister's computer science professor, who recently accused my sister of "the most blatant case of plagarism" she'd ever seen, because she quoted a source, giving proper credit and citation (The source in question was Wikipedia), because "Even if you cite the source and put it in quotation marks, you still have to change the wording."

'Sides, I don't see President Bush being accused of plagarising President Clinton, or Clinton plagarising Bush, or Bush plagarising Regan, or Regan plagarising Carter, or Carter plagarising Ford. And yet, I'm fairly certain all of them delivered a speech whose message was "The state of our union is strong," many of them several times.

What's all this about Karl Rove's dad's cock ring?

Seriously.

I swear, what kind of country is this?, Leonard Pitts Jr.

So, as you may have heard, we've got a new Congress. The Washington Post had a very poorly thought out picture of Speaker Pelosi on the front page of the Style section which will probably be a future IT.

You may also have heard that a certain congressman swore his (not actually legally mandated) oath not on the traditional bible, but on Thomas Jefferson's Quran, prompting speculation that Thomas Jefferson owned a Quran.

Anyway, this is all little more than a historical footnote, as it wasn't really an oath required by law, and it's not like lawmakers haven't been sworn in on other things before. Pierce took the presidential oath of office on a law book. In fact, at the same time as Congressman Ellison was being sworn in on a Quran, a representative from Hawaii was being sworn in on nothing at all.

But, as always happens, a couple of people went apewire. In an act that threatens to turn "macacanated" into a word, Rep. Virgil Goode (R-Va) macacanated Ellison by launching a tirade about how we need to tighten immigration laws to stop muslims from being elected by the will of the people. Ellison is a native-born American. I'm guessing he's a third or fourth generation native-born American (Admittedly, I haven't looked into it).

The most mind-breaking attack, and the reason I am pointing you toward Mr. Pitts's article, is that of Roy Moore, who, despite his name sounding like it, is not a Wild West-era Texas Hangin' Judge, but rather the Alabama judge who causes all that commotion a while back over a big rock with the ten commandments engraved in them.

He claimed that freedom of religion demanded that Ellison be blocked from using a Quran (Quick precis: "<Roy_Moore_Voice>In America, we have freedom of religion. In Islam, you don't. Therefore Islam is incompatible with America</Roy_Moore_Voice>"). The argument isn't too far afield from the ones that (my dad tells me) were made when Kennedy was running for President -- that a Catholic would be bound by his faith to do whatever the Pope told him to, Constitution and the good of America be damned. Which is not a bad argument for limiting positions of power to atheists, but no one's making that argument (well, except for the atheists, but they've got a vested interest).

I think I'm with Pitts on this one: "Moore's argument refutes itself so effectively he must have been drinking when he wrote it."

Pitts goes on to talk about the "strain of intolerance" that hides out inthe American spirit. I think he's missing something important, though. This doesn't feel like real intolerance to me. It doesn't feel like real bigotry. Why? Because it's too flavor-of-the-weeky. It's not really that we've got a deep-down hatred of muslims, or even that we're all secretly waiting to reveal our prejudice against the abstract "Other". Right now, it's Islam that piques our fear. It used to be Communism. And so on and so on. Actually, I think America's been pretty good on the actual longstanding-prejudice front. You don't see "No Irish Need Apply" signs any more. We've stopped systematically erradicating our aboriginal population. We've got one or two longstanding racial problems, but we've kept them on a comparatively low simmer, nothing like the many years of institutionalized oppression in South Africa. Nothing like what went on in Europe in the early 40s. Real prejudice, real bigotry, is something very deep and longstanding. It's the way your grandmother uses the "N-Word", because she's been using it since she was a little girl and her daddy always used it -- and she can't even quite compute that it's wrong to use it. That's why they're so insidious and hard to get rid of -- they're burned in, and the people who have them don't even feel that they're wrong.

No, I think that prejudice and bigotry are just convenient labels for what we're really very susceptible to: Insane Fearmongering. We weren't raised this way. And we know things oughtn't to be this way. Some folks justify this (Roy Moore did) by trying to say that these are special circumstances -- that as it happens, we're at war with Islam right now (We're not, of course, but the people doing the fearmongering either think we are, or want us to think we are), so it's "justified in this special case". That's totally bogus, of course, but it's telling to me that they think they need this justification. Real racists don't feel the need to excuse or apologize for their racism. They may try to "scientifically" prove the white man superior or the black man inferior (Watch one of them try it some time, it's pretty funny), but they'll always start from the assumption that they aren't making an extraordinary claim, that their racist beliefs are obvious and inherently good. I don't think I recall ever having a notion of a person "becoming" a racist before -- racists were racists because they'd been raised that way. Now, though, we have people who weren't raised that way, people who never had any problem with this culture and this faith before, who, one day in September, half a dozen years ago, suddenly developed an unjustified distaste for a certain religion. What we have here is people who quite clearly understand that they are standing in the face of what we as Americans are supposed to believe in -- they present this sort of prejudice as a necessary evil (Actually, read that last clause twice, once with the emphasis on "necessary" and once with it on "evil"). That is, they know it's wrong, but they feel like they have to do it anyway.

I'm not sure which is worse, now that I think about it.